March 2019 Coffee & Discussion Minutes
Topic: Cultural Preferences Regarding Nature
Location: Openlands, Chicago, IL
SUMMARY:
Announcements
1.Networking Group
Topic: How would you define Cultural Preference in nature?
Nina: In my experience, I think it can be very overwhelming to go into a community that has no idea what the Forest Preserves are, and I'm bringing in a snake skin or animal pelt and no one wants to talk to me because they don't know what it is, but the reward of that is approaching people slowly (before these items even come out on the table) and creating that connection. It can be overwhelming but can still be accomplished.
Topic: Youth engagement in nature: How can we encourage it across cultures?
Wrap Up: Is there anything we missed that folks wanted to touch on?
Action Items
Future Questions:
Location: Openlands, Chicago, IL
SUMMARY:
Announcements
1.Networking Group
- Education Standards, co-chaired by Sue Gaspar and Kathleen Skoller
- Group that wants to work on incorporate nature & health into state education standards
- Anyone interested in joining this working group should email Terry [email protected] or contact Sue ([email protected]) or Kathleen ([email protected]) directly.
- Park Rx Nature Champions, co-chaired by Sally Peterson and Terry Horton
- ParkRxAmerica.org is a physician based website, includes mapping information so that prescribers can connect patients to their local greenspaces
- We need to figure out a way to partition the geography of the Chicago metropolitan area and get people look at the sites that are already on Park RX site, and see what additional info needs to be there (pictures, details, etc.)
- Also need to get feedback from physicians on working w/ the site
- Need to find a way to reach prescribers and educate them on how/why to prescribe nature
- If you are interested in joining this working group, contact Terry [email protected] or Sally ([email protected]).
- Host needs to supply meeting room and light refreshments
- Host will be assisted in determining topic and an appropriate moderator
- Previous topics can be re-discussed!
- Contact Barb Kreski with questions or to offer: [email protected]
Topic: How would you define Cultural Preference in nature?
- Daniela: I did work on the south side where there were native plants being put in near college campuses and other neighborhood greenspace, and they received pushback from community members who did not think the plants looked nice, and did not feel compelled to care for the spaces. It could be a question of community engagement, what does this community value, what kind of outreach or education needs to happen?
- Abigail: An understanding of values is really important when it comes to cultural preference. Understanding the value of greenspace to the specific community, how they perceive nature in their own backyard.
- Fatima brings up the need for clarification on the idea of "Cultural Preference": “I grew up going to the Forest Preserves for family gatherings, I was close to nature, so nature connects to these memories for me. I don't understand how we can separate that culturally?”
- Cre: I was confused when I first heard the phrase. Just hearing the few of you talk, I wonder if the word culture should be switched to community.
- Derek: I think that’s a good point, when I first saw the term I thought about that different cultures across time have all viewed nature differently. It's too anthropological of a term.
- Kathleen: I think people can relate to the term community more easily, it makes it feel more personal.
- Eileen: Studies have found that there are cultural and racial differences in perceptions of nature, while all groups do value and enjoy nature. For me it was always very helpful to understand this, because we used to think that picnics weren't "enough" of a connection to nature, but for Asian, Latino, African American communities spending time with family in nature this is a big thing. So now groups are starting to think of this connection as “enough”, because it's how people actually want to connect with nature.
- Cathy: I have met people who have been to picnics but never made a connection to nature. I think there is still a disconnect between picnics and natures, the trees look like a wall and you don't always know about all the nature beyond this.
- Abigail: It depends on how you define the words. A community has a culture, a set of practices, traditions, and values. Culture can be as small as a family. It depends on the scale you are looking at.
- Daniela: I wonder if maybe Culture isn't the right word, just because it is so confusing to define. I think what we are talking about here is boxing race & diversity under culture, but may not express it well enough.
- Terry: I'm wondering if community better captures what we are concerned with than culture.
- Radhika points out that community can still be confusing, emphasizes the importance of connecting with the individual.
- Briana: What if we just said People? I think there's another level when you go seek nature yourself as an individual than when you look at a community.
- Fatima: In connecting individuals and communities, we may have to go into the educational part of teaching and training people. Walking to the school, I do connect with nature, but we just haven't been able to put the language to it to connect people with their memories. Nature can be just a little patch.
- Terry: Speaking of memories, that brought me back to the experience of forest bathing, where you just focus on a single plant. It's a way of getting people to think "there is nature, I can find nature anywhere"
- Nina asks how people can determine their preference if they are not exposed or immersed in anyway? How can we define this without talking about the idea of exposing people to the opportunities to select their preferences?
- Daniela: We have been working a lot doing outreach on the southwest side going through places of worship. For Latino communities, one of the biggest connections was growing up on a farm in their home country. In Chicago, many people still send their kids to Mexico for the summer. We asked what these groups thought about nature close to them, and they said they didn't understand why trees were coming down on their block, and they wished there were more fruit trees on their block.
Nina: In my experience, I think it can be very overwhelming to go into a community that has no idea what the Forest Preserves are, and I'm bringing in a snake skin or animal pelt and no one wants to talk to me because they don't know what it is, but the reward of that is approaching people slowly (before these items even come out on the table) and creating that connection. It can be overwhelming but can still be accomplished.
- Cre: We had this experience lately with a group of black youth, as soon as a snake came out, the group shrank by over half. We have to be mindful of what we introduce to people and consider what they are interested in learning about.
- Kathleen: This is why it is so important that nature be built into education for all schools. That way nature isn't such a shock.
- Sally: We had fresh fruit programs come into Waukegan, with a different fresh fruit being introduced every week, and for kids this was a big deal. If they didn't like how it looked, they didn't want to approach it.
- Fatima: I am an advocate of educating children and tapping into that first, but from what I'm hearing and from my experience as a parent, we have to re-educate the parent as well. It's easier to convince the children, they are adventurous. We have to invite and introduce this type of things softly and invite the parents.
- Sally suggests that school open houses and parent-teacher meetings would be a natural way to introduce parents to these things
- Nina: Maybe it can be as simple as addressing the parents with a statement that says "you may be uncomfortable with this, but your kids may not be! We ask that you encourage your kids instead of running away so that the kids can enjoy it". Sometimes we don't have time to address this, but perhaps we could address the adults before the presentation
- Cre: I often applaud the parent, and say "it's great that you are afraid and still don't want to deprive your child of this experience". The majority of the time it works, sometimes it doesn’t. But I made an effort, that's something to keep in mind.
- Nina: There's also this idea that kids wear their best at school, and I've experienced with school kids "I can't get dirty, I'll get in trouble at home"
- Kathleen: I always make the announcements to parents: your child has art on Friday, send them in old clothes
- Kristin: It's hard to do when you're planning outside of school programs, you can warn people but you'll still have people in nice shoes who don't want to get dirty.
- Terry: I want to bring it back to the original question. We know that most people involved in conservation issues are women over 50. What we need to bring to the group is "do we need to change our messaging?" How do we expand our message, what do we need to do? Are we talking at people or engaging with the community?
- Fatima: We need more communication that's not verbal. Maybe some kind of sign with emojis or colors/images that help connect people with "oh this is a Park Rx walking place". Some other form of communication that can connect people with wellness benefits of nature. Something that doesn't rely on verbal connection, not everyone understands or connects verbally. I noticed in Will County, they have beautiful signage that is very effective. If we can coordinate signage, location, mapping, biking and trails, there's a lot of stuff happening in the community. I feel like signage keeps coming up.
- Terry: Northwestern has the Segal Design Institute, and I have an undergrad working with me, I'll give her the challenge of coming up with a universal symbol for nature, health, and safety.
- Cre: Do you think safety is an issue?
- Everyone says yes
- Kathleen: Safety is a trust issue, an issue of experience. It's hard to just put up a sign and say "oh I trust this now". To me, it has to be experiential.
- Nina: It's very important to listen to individuals and communities and hear their thoughts on how they see nature and how they want to use nature. I see this a lot in the forest preserves, this attitude of if we give you this information you'll use it, but I think we need to slow down this process and cater to the needs of the group.
- Cre: We do also constantly generalize, oh well everyone in this community believes this. But you can talk to 20 people and find that they're all thinking differently. A group may not go to the woods, but it doesn't mean they don't like nature.
- Daniela: In New York, there are urban park rangers. Imagine if we had people within the city's park wearing uniforms to start engaging people and have those conversations.
- Radhika agrees that this is a good idea, adds that it is important for those people on the ground to look like the people you are trying to connect with.
- Daniela wants to talk to the Obama Foundation about this, since Jackson Park is such a great resource.
- Sally: What about piggy-backing on programs that already send things home to families? Like the food depository’s book-bag program that sends books, why not add a nature book? Or pamphlet on local natural areas. There is already a lot of existing distribution.
- The food depository’s runs a program where, every Friday, they bring backpacks in to schools with high free-lunch program use that are filled with food for the families so that the children and families have food for the weekend.
Topic: Youth engagement in nature: How can we encourage it across cultures?
- Fatima: I like the suggestion of building it into the curriculum. A lot of young people are used to others bringing them programs, but we should slow it down, ask the group what they know and go from there instead of just telling them.
- Sue: We had a program, Inquiry Adventures, a couple years ago that would take kids on fieldtrips, but it was like a mini-science fair project. They would work in teams and do an investigation, less telling and more discovery, more opportunity to figure it out for yourself. We also had a pre-trip visit to prep the students for the experience, asking them about their experience with nature and their attitudes. Let them get it out there and talk through the fears and anxieties. There was a lot of merit in that program.
- Terry: Does this interface with Mighty Acorns?
- Sue: We talked about trying to do that, maybe as a next level to Mighty Acorns for middle-schoolers. But it never happened.
- Daniela: That could also be a really great follow up for Birds in My Neighborhood program.
- Sue: It is hard to show long term impact, but that could help. We got one high school that actually did a symposium where students presented on the projects they did. By integrating our programs we could show more impact.
- Nina: I think it would be great to see our people training these teachers to do these programs.
- Sue: At the end of the program, we tried to offer the supplies to the teachers, but having our volunteers come and facilitate was really valuable and easier for the school’s staff.
- Cre: You can have a good curriculum, but a lot of it depends on the instructor. Would a curriculum like this work well if you try to teach the same program with youth of color, or youth that are not as invested in nature?
- Fatima: We have programs already out there that need to be pulled together.
- Radhika: Do these programs work to train CPS teachers?
- Terry: Having teacher training workshops, having funding available for these opportunities can be critical. If we can reach out to teachers that would be great.
- Fatima: You need to get the individual teachers, they become advocates.
- Radhika: It would be cool if we could collaborate and take individual teachers on these programs and give them the experience and the approach
- Sally: We haven't talked about people that lead afterschool jobs. Jackie Reeves runs an afterschool program in DuPage County, its a Title 1 school, I think they have sponsorship.
- Cathy: I want to talk about engaging older students, upper high school and college age. Some kind of social movement where we invite students who are already familiar with the preserves to bring out five of their friends to introduce them and reduce stress. It's a really stressful age.
- Terry: Cornell University has now started a Campus Rx. The idea is to work with the campus health programs, and I have started conversations with him on how to do this. Also, David Victorson, a psychologist at NW, runs True North Treks, which focuses on young adults who are cancer survivors. He has experience with that age group and may be able to help inform that.
Wrap Up: Is there anything we missed that folks wanted to touch on?
- Sally: I work with senior citizens, many of whom haven't left their facilities for years, and I want to put something together that can come into places. How can we gently get people out who have serious mobility issues, and also what kinds of things can we do to bring materials in?
- Terry: I think the folks at CBG in the horticultural therapy program would really benefit this. They have materials they bring in to places.
- Abigail: I feel like we didn't address the question of whether or not we are specifically involving communities of color when building curriculum, when we target communities of color we often don't have individuals of color at the decision-making table. We need to invite people from these communities to consult and build programs together.
- Kristin: To expand on that: how do we create scalable opportunities for youth? How do we create programs when they're young that can help get them into the professional track and get them a seat at the table in the future?
- Daniela: In urban forestry there were over 750 positions that went unfilled in the Chicago region. We are trying to create pathways, and the more we talk to people the more they say we should be talking to young kids. What I am hearing here is: Is there a way for us to look at all of our programs and education and map it out? So we can see who everyone is working with, identify gaps, and create the scaffolding into curriculum and school systems.
- Kathleen: I think it would be easier to do this visually on paper, we might need to meet separately to do this.
- Cre: When we talk about creating these pipeline programs to keep youth involved, we need to keep in mind "What are the retention factors?". I don't think it's that difficult to bring them into the field, but to keep them. Making sure there is an atmosphere that makes people comfortable remaining in the field. We need to have these people at the table and find out what keeps them involved.
- Terry: I think this was a fantastic conversation, going from what is culture and getting into that idea of community and the need to listen. If we are going to listen, we need to bring people we want to hear from to the table. Somehow this is going to build back into the education program, I'm not sure how to do that mapping.
- Abigail suggests contacting Chicago Wilderness as they have already done this
- Terry: Great, they are a part of the group so we can get them involved.
Action Items
- Mapping resources
- Connection w/ Chicago Wilderness on Education
Future Questions:
- How do we reach out to after-school programs, college students, senior citizens?
- How do we build a pipeline through these nature programs?